School cornered for withholding ‘O’ Level results

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum is seeking the release of “O” Level results for a student at Girls High School which are being withheld due to outstanding fees.

BY CHARLES LAITON

The student’s mother has failed to secure the daughter’s results compromising her chances of finding her a place to continue with her education.

In a letter dated February 19, 2016 addressed to the school’s head and copied to the Primary and Secondary Education ministry, the rights group said: “We are hereby instructed to write to your good offices challenging the withholding of our client’s results as a way of forcing her parents to pay the outstanding fees.

“The authorities’ conduct of using children as pawns to force payment is unlawful and unconstitutional as well as an abuse of authority on the part of the institution.”

The rights group further said there was no basis for the school to withhold the results because no valid legal steps or proceedings could be taken against a minor who has no contract with the school on issues of paying fees.

It gave the school 48 hours to release the results, warning that the conduct of the school was in violation of the child’s rights espoused in the Constitution.
Efforts to get a comment from the school yesterday proved futile as its phones were down.

14 Responses to School cornered for withholding ‘O’ Level results

The education system will definitely collapse if this country is to allow that to happen. These rights can only apply in developed nations where the gvt is able to cater for the schools’ needs like rates, water, electricity, telephone bills as well as resources like chalks, dusters, textbooks etc. Our poor gvt is doing virtually nothing towards that and Dokora is only brilliant in scaring teachers, and education inspectors. This would set a bad precedent as long as the gvt doesn’t take it upon itself to enforce the payment by the parents.

The system is rotten as you have few parents carrying the rest..Instead of talking about children’s rights in this situation rather make the levies more affordable. You have a primary school like Courtenay Sealous Primary in Greendale charging 140 dollars per term.Somebody explain to me why a similar school at Greengroove in the same locality charges almost half this.. Today teachers’ incentives have been removed but schools have not reflected this on their levy accounts. The bigger UGLY picture is that fewer parents will pay these ‘made in hell’ levies if these students are allowed to get results without paying what they owe…The Minister should give a guideline on the maximum allowable otherwise the whole levy system is going to be cause for collapse of the whole Education system.Why should this levy be more than 30 dollars per term for Primary schools? What exactly is the money being used for..The answer is over 60% of the parents are not paying and the other 40% is being mobbed and robbed forced to carry the other 60% and now those who have not paid one red cent are going to close the only avenue that was left for these truant parents to contribute something to the fees for their children..and what does the Minister do? Light his pipe, go whistling in the mountains..This is how not to run a Ministry..no?

But why send your child to school and expect everything to flow smoothly without paying up?People find energy to go to rights groups to force scools to release results but fail to put that energy to sourcing fees. All along your kids learn using other pupils’ fees whose parents are sacrifising the little they have to pay up fees. We can say Dokora this, Dokora that but are we playing our roles, teachers, parents and the so called Rights groups.

The child is an innocent soul here so the school should not punish them but rather deal with the parents. Obviously once they make it a legal case it will be dealt with by the courts and they will definitely recover all their dues. Withholding the results solves nothing. The rights group is right, thats violation of the child’s right.

Children have a right to education, and this right should be progressively realised. Right to education is a provision right, as much as it has protection elements. As parents/guardians, we should send our children to schools that we can afford, to avoid the foregoing scenario. Other than ordering the school to release results within 48 hours, I did not hear of a payment plan in all the discourse. Can we genuinely want our child to got to school from grade 1-7, form 1-4, form 5-6 without paying, and when outstanding fees beckon on us we rush to seek legal recourse. What of the right of the school to seek legal recourse to recover the accruals?

The school is allowed to seek legal recourse to recover the fees,what the school is not allowed is to withhold results for the kid. Why did they first allow the kid from form 1 to form 4 without paying fees and not even doing anything about it?